… for a while yesterday, I hoped that if nobody scored, maybe the Saints could keep the title for another year. That didn’t happen.
… I thought National Anthem singers lip synched their performances. Christina Aguilera proved me wrong.
… the Black Eyed Peas confused me. A cover during their halftime show? And I felt so bad that they made Slash dress like a Black Eyed Pea, glittering up his top hat. When they were attacked by Tron, halftime got interesting.
… what says good times and Groupon more than suffering in Tibet?
… Eddie Pells at HuffingtonPost.com wrote of the looming NFL players lockout:
A labor war that pits rich athletes against richer owners could shut down the game.
This is lazy writing, suggesting that the conflict involves two sides that are silly to squabble because of their wealth. So far, the players aren’t making any demands of the owners except that they demonstrate the losses that have led them to demand another billion dollars back from the players, and that have prompted them to consider two more regular season games. This is the owners asking the players to make concessions and threatening a lockout if they don’t make them, which really isn’t a “rich vs. richer” thing, and he should know that.
As for the “rich players” thing:
The median salary in the NFL in 2009 was roughly $770,000. In 2008 it was about $720,000. The Steelers have the highest median salary at $1.1 million, the Packers the lowest at $440,000. The Redskins have the highest payroll at $123 million. The Giants have the lowest at $76 million.
The average (arithmetic mean) NFL salary in 2006 was $1.4 million.
Source: http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/salaries/mediansalaries.aspx?year=2007
Given that the average length of a Gridiron player’s career in NFL is 3 years, average Green Bay salary of $440,000 means that after tax they earn less than $1 million total career earnings hampered by the fact there is nowhere else to play as Leagues have folded.
That’s substantially more than most of us make, but given that the average career is three years, the labor dispute isn’t quite the intramural blue blood spat that the conventional phrasing makes it sound like.
